Art and theater reviews covering Seattle to Olympia, Washington, with other art, literature and personal commentary.
If you want to ask a question about any of the shows reviewed here please email the producing venue (theater or gallery) or email me at alec@alecclayton.com. If you post questions in the comment section the answer might get lost.

Friday, December 30, 2011

"ART LESSON": oil on linen by Todd Clark. Courtesy B2 Fine Art

"Cold Fusion"

These cold paintings are hot

Cold Fusion at B2 Fine Art is the second part of a two-part exhibition. The first part, Hot Fusion, was last summer. Hot summer, cold winter, and a few of the same artists: Scott J. Morgan, Judy Hintz Cox, Todd Clark and photographer Jeff. G. Mitchell.

All of the work is abstract in the classically modern style that epitomized American art in the 1940s and '50s. Don't look for anything radically new here, but you can expect to see fine art by fine artists who thoroughly understand the elements of painting.

Cox and Clark dominate the show with their large, exuberant paintings.

Cox is showing works in three distinct styles. There is a group of highly gestural abstractions with loosely brushed strokes on a stark white background; a series in a variation of this with slightly more controlled forms and a similar white background; and a third series that is also similar but much more highly controlled and almost minimal, with more solid shapes which formulate recognizable subject matter. There is one called "Practicing Leaving," for instance, that has a contour drawing of a penguin in it, one that has a few shapes that look like boulders stacked on a precipice, and yet another that has an animal shape and a box drawn in perspective as if hurling through space. These paintings are the least conventional works in the show. I appreciate their originality and their smart use of space and balance, but they're not as exciting as Cox's more painterly abstractions.

In terms of pure painterly energy the best of Cox's works are the ones with reddish-brown and ochre shapes on chalky white. The tenuous balance of open and closed spaces and the excitement of a variety of transparencies, drawing, dense layering and texture within closed shapes is very exciting. I'm tempted to say these are the best paintings in the show, but that would discount Clark's work, which is also excellent.

Clark is as eclectic as can be. He has mined the best of Abstract Expressionist art, stealing from the likes of Pollock, de Kooning, Mark Toby and Joan Mitchell and others. His "Solo" is like a Pollock in black and white but with brushstrokes instead of dripping. "Art Lesson" is a Joan Mitchell in tones of gray with accents in pink, blue and orange. Toby's famous "white painting" comes into play in his large painting called "Small Todd Meets Big Todd." The top two-thirds of this painting is a field of squiggles of paint in tones of gray with Toby-like white on top, and the bottom one-third is infused with some of the hottest reds and pinks I've ever seen. It's on fire!

Morgan's paintings are mostly small abstractions with organic shapes in muted colors. His one large painting, "VA" (65-inches square) is his best, due to its controlled push and pull between shapes.
Mitchell's photographs are close-ups of parts of buildings and airplanes that twist and soar through space. The forms look like they've been distorted as in a funhouse mirror, but they have not been manipulated in any way. These are strong industrial images.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

"Ingrained," a print on handmade paper by Jessica Spring "Pin a Dorito on an American" by Lynn Di Nino

The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation Award is a big deal. Being nominated is an honor bestowed by one's peers, and being chosen as the award recipient is an even greater honor. The choices are made by a committee including Tacoma Arts Administrator Amy McBride; Jeremy Mangan, recipient of last year's award; Rock Hushka of the Tacoma Art Museum; local artist Susie Russell Hall and others. It's just about the biggest award granted to local artists. As such, it's a shame that it doesn't merit a major gallery or museum showing such as what used to be given to the Neddy Award nominees. As a matter of fact, since the Neddy has taken its show away from Tacoma Art Museum in favor of a Seattle venue, maybe the Foundation Award show could replace the Neddy at TAM.

Instead, it's a window show in the Chamber of Commerce building at Pacific and 11th. Not exactly the best way to show such honored work.

Spring is the founder of locally-based Springtide Press. Her piece for the Foundation Award, titled "Ingrained," is an art book created on handmade paper made from ancient Western red cedar logs and printed with poetry written by Spring. The pages hang from a display rack similar to those used by stores to display flooring.

Spring explains: "I found the original cedar shingle sales kit on antique row in Tacoma. I had seen it long before our trip to Yakima, and it came to mind pretty quickly after my idea and on a return visit I was really relieved to find it still there. I was determined to make my own paper for the piece, and had experimented a little with eastern arbor vitae. After some strange phone calls to local mills, I found Darwin. He's been working in the timber industry since he was a kid (and has less than 10 fingers to prove it). Darwin had some huge Western red cedar logs with bark - nearly two feet across. He pronounced these behemoths "adolescents" and used a huge scraping tool to peel off several sections I could load in the car. After soaking (them) I could remove the inner bark in strips, cook it for most of a day, then process in a blender. The resulting fiber made beautiful paper - some I used straight, some I mixed with abaca or recycled cotton paper - all of it dried pasted on my studio windows."

Spring wrote all the text except the W.B. Yates quote on the back of the piece. Unfortunately, in its present setting it is impossible to see all of the pages. I have seen only enough to get the impression that the text has to do with metaphors for our relationship with the forests and includes some clever word play.

Similar in content is Peter Serko's photograph "Only the Trees Remember," a beautiful, misty photo of almost invisible leafless trees and houses printed on aluminum with a strange green patina. It sweetly captures the essence of the land of the Pacific Northwest.

By contrast, Lynn Di Nino's "Pin a Dorito on an American" is a delightfully playful sculpture of five obese characters standing on the food they devour. It's like a tongue-in-cheek monument to the glories of junk food.

Also very enjoyable is Ellen Ito's take on a poster from the movie "Cool Hand Luke" printed in soft gray washes with bright red paint on a long scroll.

This show includes representative works from some of Tacoma's best artists. You owe it to yourself to see it, even if it means standing out in the rain and the cold. The window display is supposed to remain for an indefinite period of time. I was told it would be about three months.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Pastels by invitation

Seventy-seven artists from United States and Canada show in Tacoma

“Suspended Flora”: A pastel piece by Marcel Schwarb. Courtesy American Art Company

American Art Company is now hosting the Northwest Pastel Society's 25th Annual International Open Exhibition.

Pastels have a bad rep, often deserved, but not always. The name is associated with soft and pretty colors, and pastel as a media has long been thought of as a media of sweet grandmothers who take it up as a hobby - despite the example of Edgar Degas, who revolutionized pastel art with layered and heavily textured works as far back as 1880. That influence is still very evident in the current pastel exhibit at American Art Company. There are some marvelous landscapes and urban scenes with rich colors that are worth long and serious contemplation.

I like many of the Degas-influenced pastels, but what this show proves is that there have been no advancements in the art of pastel since about 1886. This exhibit, while beautiful in rich textures and luminous colors, is filled with trite imagery. There is not a single abstract painting in the show, although Diana Sanford's "Portals #4" is an almost-abstract street scene with a strong composition and some wonderfully muted colors. There is one painting of a skull and a hammer called "Signs of Life" by Trish Harding that verges on abstraction and Surrealism. There is also a handful of figures including one nice one of a girl playing the piano, "Playing Her Piece" by Jane Mayer, which is very lovely and has some wonderful green and yellow tones in her cast shadow. And there is a single nude, Paul Barton's "Resting Dancer," that is nicely done but rather clichéd. Everything else is landscape or cityscape. Or animals. And the show would have been much better if every single animal picture had been rejected.
And now for comments on a few of the best works.

Marcel Schwarb's "Suspended Flora" has the strong heavy forms and diagonals and slanted light of an Edward Hopper cityscape, but without Hopper's sense of pathos and alienation. The colors are terrific, especially the blue of the sky that shows through an opening in the top of the building in such a way as to turn negative space into a positive. And I like the way Schwarb cropped the scene and made it look like a slightly tilted camera shot.

Kari Tirrell's "Venice" is a marvel of technique. It's a scene of two gondolas in Venice seen from a bridge. The clarity and realism is amazing. The water looks like a photograph printed on slick photo paper. I've never been one to admire art for technique alone, but I do admire this painting.
Lawrence Barone's "Black River" (which is green) captured the award for "Best in Show." It is a very simple scene of a single tree on a river bank with a skrim of trees in the background. Everything is nicely harmonized and unified.

Also impressive are "Rocklyn Summer" by Ladonna Kruger and Barbara Benedetti Newton's "Spellbound" and Deborah Matlock's "Thirteen," a painting of a girl in a fencing outfit resting with sword in hand.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Photos: from top, Michael E. Self as Ebenezer Scrooge, Nicholas Hayes as Tiny Tim with Scrooge and Geoffery Simmons as the Ghost of Christmas Presence, Tim and Scrooge, Ghost of Scrooge.

I swore I was not going to see any more Christmas shows this year. Especially not yet another version of “A Christmas Carol,” and yet I saw “Scrooge” at Capital Playhouse. And I’m glad I did.

This production of “Scrooge” is thoroughly professional in every aspect, from the sets, lighting and costumes to the directing and the music, both by Troy Arnold Fisher, and of course the performance by the entire cast from lead actor Michael E. Self as Ebenezer Scrooge to ensemble actors such as Nicholas Main and Jake Hoff who appear as Peter Cratchit, an urchin, and undertaker and “boy with sled.” It is theatrical in the extreme, with powerful special effects and exuberant performances. Even the wigs and the fake beards and moustaches some of the men wear are outstanding in a couple of ways: they reflect the styles of the times, and they help to transform actors such as Jerod Nace and Geoffery Simmons into a multiplicity of believable and sometimes hilariously absurd characters (witness the outsized moustache Simmons sports in the opening scene). It’s a rare thing when wig designs are credited in a performance program, but Michael Costain deserves the recognition.

More on costumes, sets, etc. later, but now on to the performances.
Nace – a veteran of many shows at Capital Playhouse, Tacoma Musical Playhouse, Lakewood Playhouse and others – turns in one of his finer performances in this show. He’s in fine voice on “I Hate People” and “Thank You Very Much.” He’s loveable as Tom Jenkins and switches to three other characters with ease.

Simmons, the only Equity actor in the cast, is a fabulous Ghost of Christmas Present. I haven’t seen him on a South Sound stage since his fabulous performance in “Sideshow” three years ago and “Ain’t Misbehavin’” in 2005, and it was great seeing him again. In this role he doesn’t get a chance to solo much, which is a shame, but he does get to strut his stuff with broad gestures and a marvelously booming laugh, and he imparts a brilliantly regal personality to the ghost.

Diane Lee Bozzo is great as the Ghost of Christmas Present. Her singing with Scrooge and others on the song “Happiness” is potent and lovely.

The other women in the cast – Christie Murphy, Rachelle Riehl, Erin Snodgrass and Gwen Haw – are all excellent, but the plum roles belong to the men: to Self, Simmons and Nace; to Patrick Wigren as Marley, young Scrooge and others; and to Nicholas Hayes as Tiny Tim.

Wigren, whom I took special note of in his fabulous performance as Rooster in “Annie” last year, is captivating as the ghost of Jacob Marley with his weird sideways walk while weighted down with chains, and he is convincing as the young Scrooge. My only regret is his amplified voice when playing Marley was too loud. The effect was great, but the volume was deafening. (I have been complaining for at least eight years that Capital Playhouse overdoes the volume. It’s not Wigren’s fault; it’s the fault of a theater that is too small to have the volume so loud.)

Hayes, a third grader in his first main stage performance at Capital Playhouse following performances with the company’s Kids at Play and Kids in Koncert, is charming as Tiny Tim, and his voice on the haunting “The Beautiful Day” is crystal clear.

Finally, there is Scrooge. Self is a consummate actor who brings the character to life and makes us hate his stinginess yet still enjoy his personality even before his famous transformation takes place. And his singing is really great. He has a strong voice that is deep and mellow with a hint of gravel and resonance. Self owns every scene he is in.

Now back to a few words about the designers and the tech crew. The set designed by Bruce Haasl and built by Haasl and technical director Dennis Kurtz beautifully captures the feel of mid-19th century London. The shop windows and the massive wrought iron gate and the huge clock that hovers over it are impressive. Three separate parts of the set revolve to change from street scenes to interior scenes and Scrooge’s heavy four-poster bed moves on and off stage and revolves and shakes, and there is lots of fog and dramatic lighting and sound (lighting by Matt Lawrence and sound by Tom Dakan). The costumes by Asa B. Thornton are outstanding. Marley’s costume and that of the Ghost of Christmas Present are deliciously elaborate and pretty much indescribable.

It’s a story that never gets old, and it is presented with panache and dramatic flair. I definitely recommend “Scrooge.”

The musical “Peter Pan” appeals to children of all ages and to adults who want to recapture the wonder of childhood, if only for a couple of hours. Tacoma Musical Playhouse caters to that targeted audience by selling Tinkerbell fairy wings and pirate hats and hooks that light up – and the kids are encouraged to light them up and shout out “I believe in fairies” to restore Tinkerbell to life when her light is dying out in the second act.

Offering “Peter Pan” as a holiday show was a wise choice on the part of TMP because it captures the spirit of the season without referencing Christmas – a nice break from an endless spate of Christmas shows.

Since Mary Martin played Peter Pan on Broadway in 1954, the part has mostly been played by women. TMP’s production is no exception, and Erika Zabelle was a good choice for the role. She has the pixie look generations of audiences have come to expect of the magical boy who never wants to grow up. She also has the grace and rhythm needed to strut and fly and crow with boyish arrogance.

In the other major role, that of Wendy, Bailey Boyd is convincing as a young girl on the cusp of adulthood, and she sings beautifully with a clear voice that is whispery on the low notes and rings out with resonance on the high notes. Boyd may not be familiar to Tacoma audiences, but she is an audience favorite in Olympia, where she has performed in many shows at Capital Playhouse. Her duets with Zabelle on “What Happens (When You’re Grown Up)” and later on “Don’t Say Goodbye,” with backup by Sarah Samuelson as Mrs. Darling, are the most powerful and beautiful songs in the show. Zabelle and Boyd harmonize as a single voice.

Kellen O’Brien as John Darling and Caleb Haalstrup as little brother Michael have the right look for their parts, but could be more exuberant. Mark Rake-Marona, a veteran of countless TMP shows, is inconsistent in the double role of Mr. Darling and Captain Hook. I particularly like the way he captures Mr. Darling’s ambivalence and discomfort in the role of father and titular head of a household that is really run by the mother and the pet dog, Nana (Garrett Young), but his interpretation of Hook is somewhat lifeless until the second act when he sings “Goodbye, Peter Pan.” From that moment on he nails the role and demonstrates his versatility as a singer and actor.

Lexi Scamehorn is majestic as Tiger Lily, and I love her costume (by Janet English). Interestingly, the Indians are costumed not as American Indians but as Aztecs or Mayans. However, their singing and dancing is squarely in the American Indian mold.

I don’t know the ages of the actors playing the Lost Boys, but they look older than they should be, and they’re not all boys. The advantage to choosing older actors to play the Lost Boys is they can handle the dance moves and the complicated blocking better. And a couple of the young women playing boy roles are particularly charming.

With characters flying, Tinkerbell’s moving light and many set changes, “Peter Pan” is a technically challenging show to produce, and the TMP tech crew pulls it off well. John Chenault’s lighting is particularly effective.

The set by Will Abrahamse is not his best work. Some of the set pieces look cheap, and the parts actors have to climb on are slightly wobbly, but the painted backdrops are great. Moving great crowds of pirates and Indians and Lost Boys through these set pieces also proves to be awkward at times – too many people having to exit through too-small spaces, most notably when the pirates capture all the Indians and Lost Boys.

Not credited in the program is the actor in the crocodile suit, but I was told it is stage manager Bethany Bevier. She drew great applause every time she crawled on stage and she got to take off her crocodile head and take a bow at curtain call – a much-deserved bow because stage managers are unseen and unsung heroes of theater, appreciated by cast and crew but seldom properly acknowledged by audiences.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

My biggest worry writing this review is that I’ll run out of superlatives. That’s because there’s not a single element of "Pinocchio" at Centerstage that isn’t exemplary. It’s a big, blustery, joyous, musical olio chock full of outstanding singing, dancing and acting, delightful characters, superb music, great direction and choreography, brilliantly creative props and sets… See what I mean? Not enough superlatives.

This production, adroitly directed by Vanessa Miller, is not a true musical or play, but a British style Panto, a traditional entertainment generally presented in mid-winter, though not Christmas themed. It combines a familiar fairy tale, in this case "Pinocchio", with song, dance, outrageous costumes, props and sets, vaudeville style acts, comedy, contemporary and local humor, and lots of audience participation. You’ll be encouraged to comment, boo, cheer, and give advice and warnings to the various characters, and a handful of children get to go onstage to help out with a comic follow-the-bouncing-ball type sing-along. The result is a non-stop rush of giddiness for both the cast and the audience.
Pinocchio (Daniel Goodman) is no less than a rubber-jointed, singing, dancing, acrobatic marvel, reminiscent of Dick Van Dyke at his best. His love object is the beautiful Princess Brittany (Sonya Meyer), who does for Ms. Spears what Tina Fey did for Sarah Palin. Meyer, who started in children’s theatre and established herself as a vocal sensation before leaving the area for college, is back and better than ever. A true triple threat, her magnificent voice is amplified by great dancing as well as acting. She’s attended by a rhymed troupe of talented BFFs named Addison, Madison, Chelsea and Kelsey (Fiona Webber, Olivia Barry, Hannah Shreaves, Celeste Barry.)

No less a triple threat talent is the Blue Fairy (Meg McLynn), another powerful vocalist and dancer who arrives on roller skates to talk to the audience at the head of the show. She later tap dances, glides on in an office chair, and generally covers the bases as an outrageous integral character cum narrator.
One of the Panto conventions is to have a female lead played by a man in drag. In this case it is Geppetta (Bob De Dea,) the female version of the famed puppet maker. His ample height is intensified by a Marge Simpson size wig, and his witty banter made the funnier by his outrageous appearance. Also traditional to Panto is a lead boy played by a female. Here it’s Lampwick (Hannah Mootz), who, like the rest of the cast, has it all together; singing, dancing, comedy and acting.

Rounding out the cast is a gaggle of other equally talented folks, often playing multiple parts. They include the delightfully evil and slightly addled Stromboli (Daniel Wood), King Frank (Sam Barber), a police officer, baker, prime minister and a governess (Jeremy Adams, Kip Brookbank, CJ Conrad, Megan Ann Jones) .

The redoubtable David Duvall, easily the best in the west, handles the superb musical direction and anchors a four piece band (with John VanZanten, Andrew Carson and Mark Malcolm) that pushes the pace, swinging effortlessly through a wealth of musical styles and sound effects, all done to perfection. Costume designer Ron Leamon, along with wig stylist Johnni Whitby, runs the gamut through an amazingly rendered puppet costume with animatronic growing nose, a stunning Princess Brittany, the outsized and outrageous Geppetta, and an over-the-top blue fairy, replete with matching blue wig and outfit enhanced by light-emitting rings and hair adornments. Sarah Sugarbaker’s clean set is further graced with stunning add-ons, like a gobbling whale by Steffon Moody, and amplified with lighting effects by Amy Silveria. I can’t name them all, but the entire production support group deserves to take a bow.

If you’ve been reading my reviews lately you might have noticed that this is the third of three praising Centerstage productions, a record that might make the wise man associate “Centerstage” with “season tickets.” Whatever artistic director Alan Bryce is doing, he ought to bottle it and send a case to the other theatres in the area. It would be, as they say in Yiddish, a real mitzvah.

In any case, don’t miss this night of mood-elevating jollity. It will be gone before you know it, and at this time of year, this is exactly what we all need.

You'd think a gallery that's been open only a few months would not be able to mount a show featuring favorite artists from previous shows. But Flow (formerly Mineral) has done just that with a show called Remix + featuring prints, collages and sumi painting by Mary Bottomley, Bill Colby, Fumiko Kimura, Andrea Erickson, Ellen Miffitt, Selinda Sheridan and Nola Tresslar, plus jewelry by Lisa Von Wendel.

It's a nice little show, and although I didn't pay any attention to the prices - I seldom do - I suspect a lot of these works are reasonably priced and would make for nice Christmas gifts. (I heard a rumor that Erickson is going to use her "Winter Solstice" as a Christmas card this year, so if you buy it you'll have the original of the image all your friends have on a card. Score!)

A few words about selected works from the show:

Bill Colby's "Autumn Sun" is a warm and mystical abstract landscape in a style reminiscent of Adolph Gottlieb, but softer and more delicate. The sun, concentric circles of yellow and reddish orange shrouded in a gray sky and streaked with silvery icicles, hovers over a floating oval within which is a tangle of tree limbs seen at sunset. This little print brings warmth to dreary days.

There is quiet strength and sureness of brushstroke in Erickson's "Sumi Mountain." Five soft vertical brushstrokes create craggy mountain spires on the white paper and atop these spires are evergreen trees created by very delicate strokes of the brush. Also by Erickson is "Zen Petals," a simple expression of pure energy with a single circular stroke in light gray with five red blobs of ink and black splatters, and the previously mentioned "Winter Solstice," the essence of winter captured in collage, sumi ink and handmade paper. Depending on your point of view it's a snow-covered field with a mountain range in the background and a dark sky, or a scene from high on a snowy peak looking down on a molten brown river. The coldness and brightness of the white field at the bottom is intensified because it is layered over darker and duller colors and accentuated by bright patches of red and orange. The sky or the molten river is a marbled brown color that looks like a volcanic eruption. This is a strong little painting.

Bottomley is showing works in very different styles. Her "Evening Mist" is delicate and airy, and reminds me a lot of Whistler's "Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket." A few simple strokes of ink float on a glimmering gray ground like feathers in an updraft. Bottomley's "Random Poem (Kana)" is a heavily structured collage of Japanese writing on pieces of paper with a variety of textures and colors. It is classically balanced and somber.

Similar to Bottomley's collage is Tresslar's "In the Flow." The wall labels don't list media, so I'm guessing here. It appears to be a collage of various papers with thread and little bits of glass and gold leaf. It is very dense and heavily textured with a subtle combination of red, purple and gold colors.

Finally, what may be the strongest piece in the show - actually two pieces hung together as one - is (are) Tresslar's "Know Thyself I" and "Know Thyself II." These are simple abstract painted collages on convex-curved panels with simple shapes, strong, dark colors and speckles of sparkling gold.

These are but a few of the many nice works on display. It's a small show, but with a lot to see. Stop by for the next Third Thursday Art Walk.
Remix +

Welcome!

I get paid for reviews in newspapers that I then post here, but I do many reviews and other articles that I don't get paid for. If you enjoyed reading them, please put something in the tip jar. Everything helps - thanks!

Subscribe to my blog

About Me

I am an artist and writer living in Olympia, Washington. I write an art review column, a theater review column and arts features for the Weekly Volcano, a community theater review column for The (Tacoma) News Tribune and regular arts features for OLY ARTS (Olympia).
My published novels are: This Is Me, Debbi, David; Tupelo; The Freedom Trilogy (a three-book series consisting of The Backside of Nowhere, Return to Freedom and Visual Liberties); Reunion at the Wetside; The Wives of Marty Winters; Imprudent Zeal and Until the Dawn. I've also published a book on art, As If Art Matters. All are available on amazon.com.
I grew up in Tupelo and Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and have been living in the Pacific Northwest since 1988 where I am active in many progressive organizations such as PFLAG (Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).